Hmmm… From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Has Google begun recalibrating its Evil Scale? If it hasn’t yet, it certainly seems to be considering it. Addressing reporters in Washington yesterday, Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that the company has compromised its principles by acceding to Chinese censorship demands and hinted that Google could adjust its stance in the country in the future. “We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference,” Brin said. “Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense. It’s perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, ‘Look, we’re going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won’t actually operate there.’ That’s an alternate path. It’s not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing.”

Quite a change, as GMSV observes, from CEO Schmidt’s confident tone when the original capitulation was announced. “We believe that the decision that we made to follow the law in China was absolutely the right one,” he said at the time. “From our perspective, we must comply with the local law, and indeed, we have all made commitments to the government that we will absolutely follow Chinese law.”